Americas Cultural Summit

The first Americas Cultural Summit brought together renowned artists, eminent thinkers, and leaders in public arts and culture funding from across the Americas to discuss their role in and impact on the rise of cultural citizenship.

The Summit

The Summit was hosted by the Canada Council for the Arts in partnership with Argentina’s Ministry of Culture and the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA). It was held in Ottawa from May 9 to 11, 2018.

It offered participants an open forum for exchanging ideas and best practices to advance public support for the arts and culture and build vibrant, prosperous, and inclusive societies.

The Summit culminated in a joint call to action that commits delegates to ongoing dialogue, collaboration and exchange. It reflects their shared values and priorities, and celebrates the rich diversity that unites the Americas region.

Voices of the Summit

Summit Statistics

Image of Americas Cultural Summit 2018 Statistics including discussion themes, gender balance of presenters and delegates, percentage of post-event survey respondents that are motivated to form new collaborations and partnerships, and participation data on the primary language of presenters and types of delegates, as well as countries represented.

Event Program

The following question guided the Summit: How can government, institutions, practitioners, artists and citizens work together to help build more vibrant, open and pluralist democracies, which respect, promote and protect the right of everyone to take part in cultural life?

Minister and Executive Secretary of the National Secretariat of Culture

Karima Bennoune was appointed UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights in October 2015.

Karima Bennoune grew up in Algeria and the United States. She is Professor of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research Scholar at the University of California-Davis School of Law where she teaches courses on human rights and international law. Her research and writing, including on cultural rights issues, has been widely published in leading journals and periodicals. She has received numerous awards, including the Dayton Literary Peace Prize (2014).

Ms. Bennoune has worked in the field of human rights for more than 20 years, including with governments and non-governmental organizations, and has carried out field missions, trial observation, election observation and research in many regions of the world. Professor Bennoune has also served as a consultant for UNESCO. She has frequently commented on human rights issues for the global media.

Astra Taylor is a writer, documentarian, and organizer. Her most recent film, What Is Democracy?, was produced by the National Film Board of Canada. A companion book is forthcoming from Metropolitan/Holt. Her other films, Zizek! (a feature documentary about the world’s most outrageous philosopher) and Examined Life (a series of excursions with contemporary thinkers including Judith Butler, Cornel West, Peter Singer and others) both premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Taylor’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Walrus, The Nation, the London Review of Books, n+1, The Baffler, and elsewhere. As an activist, she helped launch the Rolling Jubilee and co-founded the Debt Collective. She is the author of the book The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, winner of a 2015 American Book Award. She is a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow.

Alberto Manguel is a Canadian-Argentinian writer, translator, editor and critic, who was born in Buenos Aires in 1948. He has published several novels, including News From a Foreign Country Came and All Men Are Liars. He has also written works of non-fiction, such as Curiosity; With Borges; A History of Reading; The Library at Night; and together with Gianni Guadalupi compiled The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. Manguel has received numerous international awards, among them the Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters from France. He holds honorary doctorates from York and Ottawa universities in Canada, Liège in Belgium, and Anglo Ruskin, in Cambridge, England. Currently, Manguel is the director of the National Library of Argentina.

Alonso Salazar Jaramillo graduated as a social communicator-journalist from the University of Antioquia in 1989. He has published several books, including: We Were Not Born to Seed in 1990, Parabola de Pablo in 2001 and There Was No Fiesta, Chronicles of the Revolution and the Counterrevolution in 2017. In 2004, he served as Secretary of Government of the city of Medellín under the administration of Sergio Fajardo, and participated in the creation of the Compromiso Ciudadano movement. From 2008-11, Salazar served as Mayor of Medellín. It became evident that both administrations had managed to generate profound transformations in Medellín, a city that had been overwhelmed by violence for more than a decade. Education, a commitment to culture, strategies of social equity and the fight against corruption were key pillars. Salazar is a recognized consultant on politics, civic culture, and citizen security. He is also a full-time writer dedicated to investigating and narrating the reality of Colombia through the lens of armed conflict, national violence and criminal structures.

Leandro Carvalho is from Brazil and lives in London. He was Brazil’s Secretary of State for Culture from 2015-17 and appointed President of the National Forum of Secretaries of State for Culture for 2016-17. Prior to his time in government, Carvalho co-founded and was board president of two not-for-profit organization: Mato Grosso State Orchestra (2005), a professional orchestra with a unique approach to music programming and recordings, and Ciranda Institute (2003), dedicated to music education. Carvalho is also known as a creative artist, having performed both as conductor and instrumentalist around the world. He has recorded 27 albums, many of them available online. Carvalho is a UK Chevening Clore Fellow.

Jesse Wente is the Director of the new Indigenous Screen Office. Announced in June 2017, the new Office aims to implement a long-term strategy to support Indigenous talent, short- and feature-script development, television and digital media and training. The office will also facilitate relationships with broadcasters, distributors, training institutions and federal funders. Prior to this appointment, Wente served as Director of Film Programmes at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. He has contributed to CBC Radio as a critic, reporter and producer since 1996. A member of the Board of Directors of the Canada Council for the Arts, Wente has also served on the Boards of ImagineNATIVE, the Toronto Arts Council and as Board President of Native Earth Performing Arts. He is Ojibwe from Toronto, and his family is from Chicago and Serpent River.

Mauricio Delfin received a Joint Honors in Anthropology and International Development Studies from McGill University and an MA in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University. He founded and directed Realidad Visual (2001-2010), the Peruvian National Summit of Culture (2011-2014) and Culturaperu.org (2009-2015), a Cultural Information System designed and maintained by civil society. Delfin has worked as research associate for Tándem, a cultural policy think-tank, and R&D strategist for La Factura, a civic software company. He was a Vanier Scholar (2014-2017) and an OAS Open Government Fellow (2015). He currently serves as technical secretary of the Peruvian Alliance of Cultural Organizations (APOC) and as founder and director of Asociación Civil Solar, a non-profit organization that promotes the open government of culture in Peru. He is a doctoral candidate in Communication Studies at McGill University.

As Executive Director of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, Elizabeth Silkes guides the strategic growth of a thriving consortium of 220 museums, historic sites and memory initiatives in 55+ countries. The Coalition supports members in developing innovative civic engagement, transitional justice and human rights programs through exhibit design and methodological guidance, peer-learning exchanges, project grants, and joint advocacy initiatives. Previously, Liz served as CEO of Cinereach, a foundation supporting film and media projects focused on social change, and led the major gifts program at Amnesty International USA to record growth while advocating for human rights in the US and abroad. Her experience with community-based memory and media projects gives her a unique perspective on the power of the personal story to move audiences from past to present, and memory to action.

Cristóbal Bianchi is an artist, editor and scholar from Chile, whose research focus on the intersection of public space, poetry and performance. He was a research scholar at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU from 2015 to 2017 and he is currently Research Scholar and Adjunct Lecturer in the Fine Arts Department at University of Texas at Austin. He earned his PhD in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London and has taught and led workshops in Universities in Chile, Costa Rica, UK and USA. He is one of the founding members of Casagrande Art Collective in Santiago, Chile, in 1996, which has been a leading group in the staging of interdisciplinary, local, and transnational collaborative art projects in urban and aerial spaces in Chile, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Poland, Croatia, Italy, and England. As an editor, Bianchi has developed the online platform Observatorio Cultural for the National Council of Culture and the Arts in Chile. Recently, he co-edited the book Pioggia di poesies su Milano/Bombardeo de poemas sobre Milán (2016), which is a selection of the poems that were part of a “bombing poems” performance by the Casagrande Art Collective in the sky of the city of Milan, Italy, in 2015. www.loscasagrande.org

María Laura Ruggiero is an Argentine filmmaker, animator and narrative designer specializing in transmedia storytelling. Her work has been featured in several international programs regarding emerging media such as Power to the Pixel, TransmediaNext, Forward Storytelling, FIPA. She is a teacher (EICTV CUBA, UBA Argentina) and international speaker on topics of narrative language innovation and virtual reality (Berlinale, SXSW, TEDx, MIT). María Laura is a Berlinale Alumni, Member of Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School, NATPE Diversity Fellow and Jihlava Emerging Producer. She leads the StoryHackers Lab, a Pop Up Lab supported by OEI and the Board of Culture of Argentina, where she guides audiences into the exploration of new narrative languages and the impact of positive worldbuilding techniques. She runs SeirenFilms, a company devoted to the exploration of new narrative frontiers in emerging media.

Earning her PhD from the Social Justice and Education department at the University of Toronto in 2014, Eliza Chandler was dually appointed as the Artistic Director at Tangled Art + Disability, an organization in Toronto dedicated to the cultivation of disability arts, and the postdoctoral research fellow in Ryerson University’s School of Disability Studies from 2014-2016. During this time, she was the also the founding Artistic Director of Tangled Art Gallery, Canada’s first art gallery dedicated to showcasing disability art and advancing accessible curatorial practice. Chandler is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Disability Studies at Ryerson University. She is the co-director of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded partnership project, Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life. This seven-year, multi-partnered research project considers the close relationship between art, accessibility, and social change as it contributes to the development of activist art, aesthetics, curriculum, and accessible curatorial practices across Canada. Chandler sits on the Board of Directors for the Ontario Arts Council and is a practicing disability artist and curator. She recently co-curated the group exhibition Bodies in Translation: Age and Creativity at the Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery and recent publications include Disability Arts and Re-Worlding Possibilities, a/b: Auto-Biographic Studies (2018). Chandler regularly gives lectures, interviews, and consultations related to disability arts, accessible curatorial practices, and disability politics in Canada.

María Claudia Parias is a Colombian Cultural Manager who has launched and developed international and local policies to strengthen and promote the cultural industry in her country. She was the Director of Cultural Affairs in Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She also served as Executive Secretary of the Colombian Commission of Cooperation for UNESCO and represented the country in multilateral fora aimed at achieving agreements in cultural matters.

Parias headed the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra and was an Advisor to the Ministry of Culture’s Arts Directorate. She is an experienced media professional who has edited several cultural publications. She was awarded the National Simón Bolívar Prize for cultural journalism. Currently she is CEO of the Batuta Foundation; she has received numerous awards and recognition for ensuring inclusive and equitable musical education. She promotes lifelong learning opportunities for children in vulnerable areas, with the aim of improving their lives through collective practices, as well as protecting children rights and cultural diversity within Colombia.

María de los Ángeles is a lawyer, specializing in family law. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Aberdeen (Scotland) for her work on education and human rights.

She served as Secretary of Culture and Education for the City of Rosario. Since 2007, she has been the Minister of Innovation and Culture for the Province of Santa Fe. She created the Infancia de Rosario triptych, the Imaginación de Santa Fe triptych, El Alero, nacer hasta los 100 años, and CasArijón, among others.

She has worked as full professor in the Image and Sound Design program at the University of Buenos Aires; lecturer at the International School of Film and Television in San Antonio de los Baños (Cuba); vice-president of the Board of the ATEI (the Association of Ibero-American Cultural and Educational Broadcasters); and member of the Board of the FILE (The Spanish Language Institute Foundation).

She also has extensive experience as theatre producer, actress, director and playwright. She has been a speaker at various national and international conferences and public and private meetings.

As a choreographer, cultural businesswoman and charismatic orator, Rhodnie Désir is a contemporary voice grounded in her Central and West African ancestry and Afro-descendant heritage. She vibrantly articulates the expressions of the people she meets in her nine choreographic works and more than 2,200 cultural activities for youth (via the Dêzam company). These creations draw on a socially engaged and politically sophisticated perspective that weaves lively connections between collective memories of the past and our experiences of the present. In 2016, Désir’s flagship work Bow’t (Canada, United States, Burkina Faso) led to the pioneering international documentary/choreographic project titled Bow’t Trail (www.bowttrail.com), which she toured to Martinique, Haiti, Mexico and Halifax, Nova Scotia. This project was the only one from North America invited to participate in the Francophone cultural programming at the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil. In 2016, she was awarded a Grand Prix Lys de la Diversité du Québec; she is currently president of MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), is a frequent speaker (e.g., at colleges and universities in Quebec and at UNESCO events), and is also a cultural commentator (for CIBL-FM radio and Dance Current magazine).

Tito Hasbun is a Salvadoran-Canadian multidisciplinary artist. In 2006, he was part of the team that founded the Suchitoto-Stratford Initiative. This initiative partners the cities of Suchitoto in El Salvador and Stratford in Canada, and promotes the EsArtes project in Suchitoto, which was launched in March 2010. Although initially his role was that of technical coordinator, Hasbun has undertaken many roles to achieve the project’s goals, and to maintain the most appropriate course to realize its vision. Hasbun currently serves as Consulting Director, Asociación de Arte para el Desrrollo. In recent years, he has championed the establishment of new leadership within the Asociación, in order to ensure that the participating young people are empowered in their performance and in the self-management of their projects.

Amor studied Law at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts. She is currently a member of the National System of Art Creators. She has been a resident of the 2014 program of Nordic Artists' Center Dale (Norway), in 2015 at Kultur Contact (Austria) and in 2017 at the Bauhaus Dessau (Germany). Her work has been exhibited in various spaces: 21 Haus, Belvedere (Vienna); SFMOMA (USA); Laboratory Alameda Art (Mexico City); National Center for the Arts in Tokyo (Japan); Electronika Festival, Palácio das Artes in Belo Horizonte (Brazil); Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla y León (Spain), among others. In 2012 she received an Honorable Mention in the category of Hybrid Art in the ARS ELECTRONICA Awards and in 2013 she received the New Face Award of the Japan Media Arts Festival. Her work has been published in the New York Times and awarded in the event Minds Quo + Discovery 2013.

Jax Deluca was appointed to the position of Media Arts Director at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in January 2016. In this position, she oversees the NEA’s grant portfolio and field-building resources for arts organizations across the country working in film, video, audio, immersive technology, and other emerging media forms. Her field experience includes twelve years working at the intersection of arts and community-building as an artist, non-profit administrator, and educator. Prior to joining the NEA, she was the executive director of Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center (Buffalo, NY), an adjunct media arts professor at Buffalo State College, State University of New York, and a supporter of the Western New York arts and cultural sector as a board member of the Arts Services Initiative of Western New York and the Greater Buffalo Cultural Alliance.

Michèle Stephenson, pulls from her Panamanian and Haitian roots to tell compelling, personal stories that are created by, for and about communities of color. Her work has appeared on a variety of platforms, including PBS and Showtime. Her film, American Promise, was nominated for three Emmys including Best Documentary. The film also won Jury Prize at Sundance, and was selected for New York Film Festivals’ Main Slate Program. Her collaborative series with New York Times Op-Docs, Conversations on Race, won an Online Journalism Award. She was awarded the Chicken & Egg Filmmaker Breakthrough Award and is a Guggenheim Fellow and Skoll Sundance Storytellers of Change Fellow.

Taeyoon Choi is an artist, educator, and activist based in New York and Seoul. His art practice involves performance, electronics, drawings, and installations for storytelling in public spaces. Choi’s solo exhibitions include Speakers Corners, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, New York (2012); My friends, there is no friend, Spanien 19C, Aarhus (2011); and When Technology Fails, Reality Reveals, Art Space Hue, Seoul (2007). His projects were presented at the Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai (2012) and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015). He received commissions from Art +Technology Lab, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LA (2014) and SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul (2016). Choi co-founded the School for Poetic Computation where he continues to organize sessions and teach. Recently, he’s been focusing on unlearning the wall of disability and normalcy, and enhancing accessibility and inclusion within art and technology. He's currently a fellow at the Data and Society Research Institute.

Angie Pont is an artist, cultural carrier and curator. She studies, maintains and transmits the Rapa Nui culture through the oral tradition received from her predecessors. This includes having an awareness of the oral tradition contained in the a'amu tuai or the stories of their ancestors, the games of yarn or kai kai, the traditional songs riu and ute and traditional music and dance. A native speaker, she has created plays, music and dance with Maori Tupuna, such as Te a'amu o te haka'ara ma'ohi Rapa nui, the story of the descendants of the Maohi Rapa people and Tatou e piri nei pahe hau ma'ohi Rapa nui, which unites the Rapa Nui people.

Angie has represented her culture in the cultural components of various competitions. Pont is, by profession, a tourism engineer (University of the sea, Chile, 2006) and cultural manager (Universidad de Chile, 2017). She has worked as Manager of the Chamber of Tourism of Rapa Nui (2006-2009), and as Provincial Head of the Local Tourism Office of the National Tourism Service (2010-2016). Currently, she works as a professional in the field of cultural management, forming part of the Peu Tupuna organization (2017), which seeks to bring together the greatest exponents of the Rapa Nui active culture and lead the maintenance, transmission, preservation and protection of the intangible heritage of Rapa Nui.

Kenneth N. Frankel has been President of the Canadian Council for the Americas since 2014 and was previously Chairman from 2007 to 2014. He was awarded The Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal by the Governor General of Canada in 2013 for his leadership in hemispheric public policy, and has led initiatives and provided expert advice to many public and private entities, including Alcatel and the Organization of American States, where he served as legal advisor to the Secretary General. Kenneth teaches international law at a number of universities and is a frequent columnist for newspapers in Canada and elsewhere in the hemisphere.

The Hon. Olivia Grange has served as Member of Parliament since 1997 and is currently the longest serving woman MP in the House of Representatives. She was appointed Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport in March 2016. In addition to leading the Ministry, she oversees 12 agencies and 5 statutory bodies, and serves as chairman of the Jamaica National Commission for UNESCO. In her previous Cabinet role, among many other achievements, she led the development of the National Policy for Gender Equality and spearheaded the revival of national cultural celebrations through various initiatives. In 2009, she was appointed as the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) first Champion for Culture. Minister Grange is a pioneer contributor to the development of Reggae and Dancehall Music Industry in Jamaica, Canada and the United States. She is a founding member and Director of the Jamaica Association of Composers, Authors and Publishers (JACAP) and assisted in the development of the Jamaican Copyright Legislation. Notably, Minister Grange co-founded Contrast, Canada’s first black community newspaper and, in 1982, she won a City TV Iris Award. In 1997, she was nominated for Woman of the Year in Jamaica.

Juan Meliá is a visual artist, scholar and cultural manager who specializes in performing arts and has studied architecture and communication. He has held positions in both the public and private realms of the cultural sector, such as Director of Cultural Promotion at the University of Guanajuato and Executive Director of the Cultural Institute of León, Guanajuato. During his time there, he was one of the founders of the International Festival of Contemporary Art (FIAC), as well as a founding partner of the Arte3 Contemporary Art Gallery. From 2009 to February 2017, he was the National Theatre Coordinator at the Mexican National Institute of Fine Arts, where he developed projects such as the Muestra Nacional de Teatro (National Theatre Festival), Programa Nacional de Teatro Escolar (National School Theatre Program), Feria del Libro Teatral (Theatre Book Fair) and programming for the performance spaces at the Centro Cultural del Bosque. In addition, he greatly helped stimulate the internationalization of contemporary Mexican theatre.

Monique Manatch is a member of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake. Monique is currently taking a doctorate program in Anthropology at Carleton University. Her degree focuses on the impact, use and creation of digital arts in the Indigenous community. Monique is a Knowledge Keeper working closely with Algonquin Elders Albert Dumont and Barbara Dumont Hill. In 2004, Monique became founder and Executive Director of Indigenous Culture and Media Innovations (www.icmi.ca). ICMI is dedicated to skills development of Indigenous women and youth through the production of media and arts. Monique has facilitated Indigenous artists and community members throughout Ontario and Quebec. Over the past 20 years Monique has produced several video documentaries about Indigenous issues. Monique also facilitated the production of videos and community radio programming with women and youth from Kitigan Zibi Anishnabeg, Barriere Lake, Moose Factory and the Indigenous community in Ottawa.

Magdalena Moreno Mujica was appointed Executive Director of IFACCA in August 2017, having first joined the organization in July 2014 as Deputy Director. Prior to IFACCA, she was Head of International Affairs at the National Council for Culture and the Arts (CNCA), Minister’s Cabinet, Government of Chile, and international advisor to Ministers of Culture Luciano Cruz-Coke, Roberto Ampuero and Claudia Barattini. In addition, she served as Programme Director of the 6th World Summit on Arts and Culture staged in Santiago, Chile in January 2014. During her post in Chile, she was also responsible for three editions of Chile’s Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and served on the board of Fundación Imagen de Chile. From March 2012 to January 2014 she represented CNCA on the board of IFACCA. Prior to her appointment by CNCA and move to Chile, Ms. Moreno worked in Australia as CEO for Kultour, Australia’s national peak body supporting cultural diversity in the arts, and was a member of the National Cultural Policy Taskforce for Creative Australia. She has a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Melbourne, is an alumnus of the Asialink Leaders Program (2008) as well as the Inaugural Emerging Leaders Program 2010, Australia Council for the Arts. In 2000, awarded the Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch Fellowship, she undertook an internship in UNESCO (ICOM) in Paris. Since September 2016 Ms Moreno sits on the board of Diversity Arts Australia.

Simon Brault is Director and CEO of the Canada Council for the Arts. Author of No Culture, No Future, he has been a driving force behind a number of major projects and has held key positions in national organizations, notably at the National Theatre School of Canada. An initiator of Journées de la culture, he was also a founding member and Chair of Culture Montréal. Since 2016, he has been a board member of the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA). He is a sought-after speaker and, in 2017, represented Canada as a cultural expert at the first G7 on arts and culture. Simon Brault has received numerous distinctions for his commitment to the social recognition of arts and culture.

Carolyn Warren was previously Senior Arts Advisor at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and before that Vice-President, Arts Programs. There, she oversaw innovative and diverse programming for artists at all stages of their careers in visual/digital and media arts, performing arts (theatre, dance, music and opera), literary arts and translation, Indigenous Arts and interdisciplinary programs across disciplines and sectors. Previously, Carolyn was Manager of Cultural Programs at CBC, based in Montreal, where she was responsible for local and national talk and music programs for Radio One and Radio 2, network TV programming featuring independent productions by Quebec filmmakers, and online initiatives for CBC Books. Over the course of her career, Carolyn has been involved with all of the arts practices supported by the Canada Council – in many contexts, and with a pan-Canadian scope. She is also a strong advocate for the importance of digital technology in contemporary artistic production and dissemination.

Martin Inthamoussú is an artist and cultural manager born in Uruguay. He holds a BA in performing arts theory from the University of Manchester, UK; an MA in communication by the Catholic University of Uruguay; and a graduate degree in artistic education from the OEI. He is currently pursuing a specialization in international cultural relations at the University of Girona.

He has studied at the School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam University of the Arts, Netherlands. As a choreographer, he has received awards and scholarships in Uruguay and abroad.

He has taught at universities in Latin America and Europe. He is currently a lecturer at the Catholic University of Uruguay.

He currently serves as CEO of the SODRE Art Training Schools in Uruguay, where he founded the training program in contemporary dance.

Javiera Parada was the Cultural Attaché to the Chilean Embassy in the United States from 2014 to 2016. Born in Santiago, Chile, at age 7 she became an actress and later a dancer. From 1992 to 2005, she lived in Barcelona, where she attended drama school, ran a cultural center and participated in different cultural projects.

Upon her return to Chile, she worked at the Cultural Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the 'Teatro a Mil' Foundation and public and private cultural projects.

Fernando Griffith holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the National University of Asuncion. He served as an active staff member at the Health Sciences Research Institute at the National University of Asuncion as part of the JICA Cooperative Research Program (with Japan) for the eradication of Chagas disease. He also worked in the GTZ Technical Cooperative Program (with Germany) at the Health Sciences Institute. He was a visiting scholar at the Inter-American Development Bank and later at the Spanish Higher Institute for Scientific Research, within the Institute of Agrochemistry and Technology, Valencia, Spain, where he worked in the identification, cloning and sequencing of bacterial genes. He also worked in the Clinical Biochemistry field and has been a lecturer at universities and educational centres. He has authored scientific articles and delivered talks in conferences nationally and internationally, particularly on drug abuse, neuroeconomics and behavioural neurochemistry.

He was appointed Mastermind Advisor of the Transformación Paraguay program by John Maxwell, which will provide 700,000 Paraguayans with leadership training over the next two years. He created Paraguay Poderoso (Powerful Paraguay), a research and leadership project whose goal is to raise awareness, teach values and foster the development of national identity.

Fernando Griffith worked as Executive Director of the Powerful Paraguay Foundation before he was appointed Minister and Executive Secretary of the National Secretariat of Culture in September 2016. He is the head of the National Council for Culture and the National Fund for Culture and the Arts. He is also president of the Inter-American Commission for Culture within the Organization of American States (OAS).